By David Ben Gurion

The eight months before us are not like the eight months that we experienced each year - and perhaps are unlike the eight years or eighty years, and I fear to say also to the eight hundred years that have passed or that shall come in another period- for there is a clear feeling that the entire history of the Jewish nation has been folded into the seven or eight months ahead, which we have already entered, the history that has been going on for over three thousand years, and upon which shall depend the Jewish history to come, perhaps for hundreds or thousands of years. I am incapable, and do not want to see at present beyond the next seven or eight months, because in my opinion they will determine everything - for during this period the war will be decided, and there is nothing that exists for me now other than this war.

War is different from anything else in history - no matter if it is good or bad, and I do not think it is good, but one does not choose war, but is rather forced by it. And the peculiarity of war is that it subordinates everything, absolutely everything, to its needs. And whoever doesn't know enough to be subordinated and to subordinate everything to war needs - when there is no escaping war - is condemned: he is condemned to extinction, and condemned to shameful extinction. War is the supreme test, not not only of power, but of the will to live. And we are now, after 2,000 years, put to this supreme test, and it is not easy to foresee how we shall hold up and with what we shall come out of it. It is not dependent on whether the Arab League sends armies or does not, or how many Arab soldiers shall be drafted to fight us, or who will will help them and who will not help them. I don't say that there is no difference if the league will send armies or no, if tens of thousand of Arab soldiers will join the fight against us or a hundred thousand soldiers, and if they get more or less weaponry. All these will

make a huge difference, and we will pay a huge price if matters fall out one way or the other. But I say that this issue is not crucial. What is crucial is the test of wills, that the supreme test beyond which there is nothing: whoever will have the peak will, will withstand the test and remain alive. Whoever will have a failure of will, will fall, and will be faced with total extinction, moral, national and physical extinction, and therefore everything must be subordinated to the needs of war - not just the strength, not just the means, but also the soul and spirit, all the spiritual and moral powers, in addition to the physical powers of humans and of the economy - of the entire nation and of each person in the nation.

The ingathered Jewish nation has as yet not been subject to a test of collective will, since we have had almost no collective will since the lost our independence. We had collective aspirations, collective longing, but it is doubtful if we had a collection will. This will began to bud here in the homeland, since we arrived to take hold of the land of the homeland and undertake an independent endeavor, and the entire question is whether [the collective will] has already matured and ripened.

And perhaps prematurely we have been suddenly confronted with this supreme test, and we must withstand it, otherwise it will be the last test that is followed by nothing other than extinction. And therefore, it is it difficult for me now to understand any language other than the language of war. I hear every other language as as foreign language that I learned a while ago and that has since, sunk, as if fallen into the abyss. And it is best that all of us forget for now a

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